On May 29, Jonny Sharp, better known as Jonny Dollar – the producer behind Massive Attack’s Blue Lines and Gabrielle‘s triple-platinum album Rise – died of cancer at the Royal Marsden hospital.

Polydor president Ferdy Unger-Hamilton recounted to Music Week, “I knew Jonny from his work with Neneh Cherry; he co-produced a lot of her work with Cameron McVey and Massive Attack. He also produced Blue Lines. ‘Buffalo Stance’ and ‘Man Child’…had a profound effect on me when I was about 14. And when I first heard ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ – like everybody else who heard it, I don’t think I could really believe what I was hearing.” Ferdy continued that Jonny was, “as committed and driven a producer as I’ve ever met, I literally had to take the tracks by force back off him, he was so determined to make them perfect. He was as tough artistically as he was gentle a person.”

Dollar is survived by wife, Harriet, and his four children. A private family funeral in Cornwall will be held, followed by a memorial service in London. He was 45.